Cross Mate English

Remington

September

"Good night, Mrs. Williams."

The door to the sitting room we're currently hiding in cracks open, and the face of my best friend's grandmotherly housekeeper, Mrs. Jones, pops into view. She gives us a smile, which I can't understand at all. It's almost three in the morning. I'm exhausted, and I'm sure she's been here since before the sun rose. Julia makes quite the sight collapsed on the couch, her legs thrown across my lap and her head in her husband's. But Mrs. Jones adores Julia as if she were one of her own.

Thinking about it, Julia basically is her granddaughter. Mrs. Jones helped raise Julia since she was a little girl. When Julia bought a house of her own, Mrs. Jones packed up her cookbooks and followed her across town.

Jules perks up from the couch, lifting herself onto her elbows.

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Jones, for staying tonight," Julia says. "You are my hero, as always. Go home, get some sleep, and then go shopping, on me. I don't want to see you until Wednesday."

It's only Friday night. Or Saturday morning, depending on how you look at it. I know Mrs. Jones never works the weekends, but five days off is a little much just for helping with a party.

Mrs. Jones tsks, shaking her head at the outlandishness of her employer.

"You were hosting, dear. Which means I needed to be here. No offense, but we both know you can't do it without me."

The three of us on the couch burst into laughter. There's nothing to be offended about. Julia is a master of many things, but Mrs. Jones has always been her right-hand woman. After all, Mrs. Jones trained her.

Mrs. Jones finishes her debriefing.

"The cleaning crew is gone, Mrs. Williams. I sent them home with most of the leftovers. I'll see you on Monday."

"Call me Jules, Jones," Julia moans pitifully, closing her eyes in mock pain and collapsing back onto Justin's lap. "It's too late for formalities."

I swallow back the chuckle begging to escape.

Mrs. Jones did call her Jules, up until the moment Justin and Julia said I do. Julia has been Mrs. Williams ever since. It drives Julia absolutely batty.

Mrs. Jones winks at us, knowing exactly what she's done to her pseudo-granddaughter, and pulls the door closed until there's only a crack of light shining in.

"I expect to see a charge on your credit card, Amelia!" Justin yells after his housekeeper, but she doesn't reply, and we hear the front door open and shut a few moments later. Mrs. Jones hit the light switches as she went, and the vivid shine of fluorescents streaming into our hideaway dims until Julia is lit with little more than the moonlight burnished through the window.

"You know you pay that woman more money than a broker on Wall Street," I tell them, and Julia giggles between us. It's a pointless comment but a conversation we have on a fairly regular basis. I think I'm jealous that my best friends has a demigoddess for a house manager, and I'm stuck with Olga the Grump.

I cast my mind back and try to think when the last time I actually saw my housekeeper. Does she still work for me?

"Worth every penny." Justin grins, and I let the silence fall between us.

It's peaceful, hidden away with the people I love the most. Tranquil, with a layer of static electricity floating over the surface.

I should go home. Or at least to my home away from home, the bedroom saved for me in the family wing of the apartment.

Of course, it’s been months since I’ve slept in either place.

Instead, I sit in the darkness with Julia's legs on my lap, feeling her toes running up my thigh.

Julia sighs, a sound I feel deep in my gut, and slides down the couch several inches, letting her knees come to rest across my thighs as her feet, shoeless and stocking free, land on the armrest. I gather one into my hands and dig my thumb into the ball of her foot. Justin cups her neck in his hand, his fingers moving in a slow rotation up and down her throat.

It's mesmerizing the way his long, slender fingers caress her skin in the dark. I can't look away, even though I know I should.

Julia is Justin's wife. Watching him touch her shouldn't affect me like this. It shouldn't speed my pulse and make my cock twitch in my pants. But it does. Knowing she belongs to him, but spreads her knees for me, twists my gut until I want to worship at their feet.

"What was I thinking, hosting a roaring twenties party for the purpose of absolutely nothing?" Julia asks into the air, her voice tired and rhetorical.

Justin chuckles under his breath, and I smile to myself, already knowing the answer.

"You were thinking that it is, in fact, the roaring twenties," he says succinctly, the adoration for his wife bare in his voice. "If only a century after the first."